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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Domino's New Pizza Recipe - Does it Deliver?

In case you haven't heard yet, Domino's pizza is making a risky business move to celebrate their 50th year in business. Domino's decided to completely scrap their old pizza recipe and release a new and improved pizza recipe in all of their stores. They apparently did a lot of focus groups and found that people thought that their old pizza tasted like cardboard. Therefore, they spent millions coming up with a new pizza recipe. They have changed every component, the crust, the cheese, and the sauce. They documented the whole thing and launched a website to promote the event (pizzaturnaround.com).

I have never been a big fan of Domino's. Whenever I get quick takeout pizza, I usually opt for Pizza Hut. I decided to try Domino's tonight though to see if their new and improved pizza was really as good as they say it is.

I logged on to their website and saw that they were selling their new pizzas for $5.99 each when you purchase at least two medium, two-topping pizzas. The website let's you build your own virtual pizza on the screen while you order it. The first thing I noticed was that there was a lot more variety than Pizza Hut. First of all, you could pick between three different sauces; classic tomato, white sauce or barbecue sauce. To make a fair comparison, I decided to order my pizza close to my standard pizza at Pizza Hut. This means I got pepperoni and extra tomato sauce. Domino's offers regular size pepperoni and jumbo pepperoni. I had them add both since I usually get double pepperoni at Pizza Hut. V decided to get a slightly different pizza than her usual. At Pizza Hut V gets ham and jalapeno pizza. Since Domino's offered white sauce and a larger variety of toppings, she decided to get white sauce, prosciutto and feta cheese.

I arrived at Domino's 15 minutes later to pick up my pizza. I opened the boxes to check the accuracy of my order. I opened V's pizza and saw what looked like a plain cheese pizza. I told the cashier that my order was incorrect. I told him the the prosciutto was missing. He showed me my order on his computer and it did not say anything about prosciutto. He called the manager over and the manager informed me that she had never heard of prosciutto as a topping. She kept telling me that maybe I was seeing things because she didn't think they even had that topping on their website. I kept insisting that I wasn't seeing things. I pulled out my iPhone and showed her the Domino's website with prosciutto listed as a topping. She apologized but said she still didn't have the topping. I asked her to remake the pizza with ham instead of the prosciutto which she agreed to. I was annoyed to say the least. How can a large corporate website let me order something that their stores know nothing about? It especially annoys me that this topping mysteriously disappeared from my order when it was transmitted to the store. It is as if they knew that the store didn't have the topping but they let me order it anyway and then just took it off before sending my order to the store.

After my second pizza was made, I headed home to try the pizzas. The pizzas smelled fantastic on the car ride home. I opened the pizza boxes at home and saw two nice looking pizzas.

One of the new features of Domino's pizza is a garlic butter crust. It was very tasty and I even heard V use the word "gourmet" when she was eating it. It was nice and crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. This was nothing like their old cardboard crust.

Overall the pizzas were very tasty. The sauce was nice and tangy, slightly sweet and had the tiniest kick to it from crushed red pepper. The crust was nice and slightly buttery and the cheese is now a blend of mozzarella and provolone. V really enjoyed her pizza. She was very happy with the fact that Domino's has white sauce since she doesn't really like tomato sauce. I thought that the pizza was as good or a little better than Pizza Hut. It was also a lot better than a lot of pizzas that I have gotten in full service sit-down restaurants. I will most likely be getting this pizza again in the future, especially if they keep the $5.99 price tag. They just really need to work on making sure their website is accurate.....

9 comments:

I had something similar happen where I ordered some food online and there was a discrepancy between the ingredients the website mentioned and what the restaurant actually had but they acted like I was the one in the wrong.

Will probably give the new Domino's pizza a try sometime. It may never ben "gourmet" but it is nice to see that they are trying to respond to feedback.

We ordered pizza a few weeks ago online-we were following the order when the phone rang-they told us it was the wrong location but they would transfer our order to the right one.3 hours later (and many phone calls with even the manager)we got it free.Will not order from them again(also had 3 hungry screaming kids)